Indoor Air Quality and Asthma

Reliable Remodeler has suggestions for improving indoor air quality. If you have installed energy-efficient doors and windows, the good news is you're helping the outdoor environment. But the bad news is that with an efficiently contained home interior, you raise the risk of trapping pollutants that contribute to asthma.

Under tightly controlled internal conditions, your home can become a Petri dish for molds, spores, and vapors from leaking appliances, cleaning chemicals, and particles released from carpets and paint. One way to prove how true this is, is to tighten up your home for winter, wait a week, and check your countertops, window sills, and furnishings for dust. How'd that get there?

Treating Indoor Air If you have a family member who has already proven sensitive to pollen, mites, fabric particles, and dust, you might consider an indoor HEPA filter for a New Year's present. An HVAC contractor can also come over and perform an Infiltrometer blower door test to discover leaks that stream in unwanted air and pollutants. No home is perfectly tight. An energy-efficient home can inherit a drop in internal air pressure that increases indoor flow of outside air, including pollutants.

Because we spend up to 90 percent of our time inside our home, the Environmental Protection Agency reports that triggers like second-hand smoke, dust, molds, pet dander, and pests can severely affect a family member or visitor with asthma. Air filters, furniture and bedding covers, and routine deep cleaning can really help.